WHERE IS JOHN GALT?

One of my all time favorite novels is Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (Random House 1957). Not only is it a great work of fiction, it is quite thought provoking reading. In a nutshell it is the story of the demise of capitalism in America. Government intervention in business becomes so pervasive and destructive to creativity and independent thought that the best and brightest, led by John Galt, go on strike. They just walk away from their businesses and hang together in Colorado. Meanwhile the country crumbles from within because the only people left are the mediocre freeloaders.

John Galt is the hero of the book. Galt informs citizens that the men of intellect are on strike, that they require freedom of thought and action, and that they refuse to work under the dictatorship in power. The thinkers won't return, Galt says, until human society recognizes an individual's right to live his own life. Only when the moral code of self-sacrifice is rejected will the thinkers be free to create, and only then will they return.

Government involvement in our lives took another huge step yesterday with the Supreme Court ruling on Obama's mandatory healthcare edict. I guess if you are a health insurance company it's great news. I mean how can you miss if the government decrees everyone must buy your product?

At the same time our ever more fascist government is forcing people to use establishment medical practices it is waging war on anyone who tries to offer alternative methods or grow clean food. I'm not usually a conspiracy nut but this is all very fishy to me. It is documented fact that hundreds of thousands of people die each year from hospital errors, physician errors, and dangerous pharmaceuticals. So why are we now being forced to use this most flawed system?

Instead of approaching healthcare from a sensible angle, like prevention, the government is now actually dictating people line up and get into the system. IMO, this is completely and utterly insane. If this government wants to be a dictatorship why don't they make it law that people must exercise thirty minutes a day? That would probably result in an enormous reduction in healthcare costs and it wouldn't cost anyone a penny, either the individual or the collective taxpayers. Oh, silly me. That's no good. The new American way requires that special interests must be enriched at the expense of the people .... ALWAYS!

I heard Donald Trump interviewed after the ruling and he said that many of his friends who own businesses would most likely just fold, they could not remain profitable with the added burden. Another nail in the coffin of entrepreneurship. Another win for corporate dominance. It's what got me thinking about Atlas Shrugged.

Ayn Rand knew a thing or two about the brutality of Communist tyranny. She was born in Russia in 1905 and witnessed first hand the Bolshevik Revolution, the Communist conquest of Russia, and the political oppression that followed. As I watch our liberties stripped from us one by one, day by day, I wonder where we are headed in this country. I wonder "Where is John Galt?"

If you haven't read Atlas Shrugged I recommend you read it. Even if the message doesn't resonate with you it is a highly entertaining novel.

©Kinsey Barnard